Long Walk Home
by madamenaan
Summary: Danny and Delinda, dealing with a loss after the series finale.
1. Just Counting The Miles

**17/05/10 - Edited to re-add the formatting. Sorry for any confusion!**

Disclaimer: I don't own _Las Vegas_.

* * *

**Chapter 1: Just Counting The Miles**

* * *

He always gets this feeling, as he reaches the apartment door. This sense, that something is wrong somehow. He wonders if it will ever fade with time, or whether he will go on feeling this way, remembering things he just wants to forget, for the rest of his life.

The apartment is always dark by the time he gets home in the evenings. Outside, the sky looks almost black against the bright glow of the Vegas strip. It used to comfort him, that oh-so-familiar view, the one constant in a city full of change. Now the neon lights just seem garish, too luridly bright and unashamed, as though they are taunting him with their promise of excitement, of happiness and escape. But then, in so many ways the darkness of home is worse.

He spends the day just wanting to get out of the casino, away from the lights and the sounds that are too vivid and too loud, too false and harsh; away from the people, all of them talking, laughing, shouting. It is all too much now, leaves him dazed and disoriented, this world that he grew up in. But every day, in this moment as he turns the corner of the hallway and makes his way towards their door, he finds himself dreading the darkness and the silence he will find inside.

He used to love coming home; it used to be the best part of his day. Opening up the door to find the lights on, music playing softly, and her there waiting for him. She'd come over, meet him with a smile or a kiss or a story about something that happened at work that morning, something somebody said, some crazy idea she'd had.

He misses the way she used to be then – always so full of life, always smiling, laughing, pouting, moaning. Now he feels like he's sharing the apartment with a ghost. Now it's a good day if she's out of bed and dressed, and he's ready to celebrate if she tells him she's been to the store to buy milk or a newspaper.

He reaches the door, unlocks it and pushes it open. It is dark inside, as it always is, and cold; she has forgotten to turn off the air conditioning again today.

"Dee?" he calls into the silent room. He can hear his voice sound back to him through the shadows, can hear the faint anxiety in its forced and cheerful tone. "Dee, I'm home!"

She doesn't reply, perhaps because she doesn't hear him, perhaps because she doesn't want to.

He leaves his keys on the table, hangs his suit jacket over the back of a chair. He tugs his tie looser with one hand – sometimes, now, he starts to feel like he's choking on that thing.

He walks to their bedroom, spacing his steps slowly, evenly. The door stands half open, and he sees her, sitting by the window.

She is looking outside, watching the darkness fall and deepen. She wears an old grey t-shirt of his that hangs just above her knees. She must be cold, he thinks. Her hair falls untidily over her shoulders; in the faint light from the window, it looks silver rather than golden.

Looking at her makes his heart ache. She is so pale that her skin looks almost translucent, greenish veins visible just beneath it. Her eyes are swollen and red: she has been crying again. He can't stand to think of her sitting and crying alone in this room, but he knows that she does, and that there seems to be nothing he can do to stop it.

She doesn't look up. He lifts his hand and gently taps his knuckles on the wooden door. She turns her face towards him, and tries to make herself smile.

"I didn't hear you come in," she says.

He lingers a moment in the doorway. He wishes he knew what to say.

"It's kinda cold," is all he says in the end.

He walks across the room and sits at the window seat beside her, looking out. Lights flicker on and off, luminous against the dark sky.

He reaches out to her and takes her hand. She is cold; her flesh stands up in goose bumps.

He wraps his warm hand tight around hers. He doesn't know how to touch her any more. She seems so fragile, breakable as glass. He doesn't want to hurt her.

He doesn't know how to talk to her either, doesn't know what to say. He thinks perhaps he could tell her that he knows what it's like, this deep, constant ache that just doesn't go away; could say that maybe to talk about it might ease it, soften it.

But then he looks at hazel eyes that are clouded from crying, and he can't bear to talk about it. He can't bring himself to burden her with his grief, when she is so crushed under her own. It seems wrong to claim any pain for himself.

He wants her to talk to him, tell him what to do and how to help, but at the same time he is afraid that there really is nothing he can do, no cure for this. So he just sits, wordlessly, holding her cold hands.

"How was work?" she asks finally, forcing herself to break the silence.

He is grateful to her for making the effort, but he can't think what to say in reply. All his days merge into one now. He finds himself losing track of what is going on, of what day it is, what meetings there are, what arrangements need to be made.

At first he embraced work as a distraction, but now he finds that there is no way of distracting himself from this. He spends as much time as he can at his desk, poring over files and accounts and paperwork – anything to avoid being with people, talking to people for any length of time – and yet he just can't seem to keep up, can't seem to get himself together.

Like a couple of days ago, when he and Mike picked up some lowlife lifting chips on the casino floor. As they dragged him off to holding, the guy had started babbling something about his kid daughter, about who would look after her if he was locked up. And while a part of Danny knew that this was probably nothing but a desperate attempt at sympathy, and that he just needed to call the cops and have them take this guy away, the other part of him had bought it anyway.

Looking in the guy's wallet, he found a picture of a girl: maybe six or seven, cute and smiling gap-toothed at the camera. He didn't hear much after that – the questions Mike was asking, or the chip-thief's stuttering responses. He just kept thinking about that little girl, with her untidy bangs and her freckled nose, couldn't get it out of his head long enough to think straight. So he'd let the guy go, asked Mike, who was calling Metro, to say it had been a false alarm.

"Just go home to your kid," he'd told the chip-thief wearily, and walked away before Mike could start asking him what the hell he was doing. The answer was simply that he didn't have the strength to keep talking any more.

Now, he just says, "Fine, thanks," and smiles at her. And then, after a moment, he adds, "It's gettin' dark. You want me to turn on the light?"

She makes a vague gesture, a kind of half shrug. He stays where he is, holding her hand.

"I hate thinking about you sitting here crying all day," he tells her. He tries to look at her, searching out her eyes, but she turns them away, out to the dark sky.

"Hey," he says gently. He wants her to see him, to see how much he loves her; wants her to listen to him, to hear him.

Finally, after a moment's hesitation, she looks up. He reaches to touch the curve of her face, to smooth a soft tendril of her hair with one finger.

She turns her cheek into his palm, lets it rest there a moment, and then turns it away.

"I'm fine," she tells him, her voice quiet.

He sighs. She's not fine; they both know that. She has gotten thinner and paler every day. Any weight she gained with the baby is long gone. Now, her hips and ribs are sharply defined beneath her skin, her face has lost its colour, her eyes are large and unhappy, and she no longer smiles.

He misses her – he misses his beautiful girl, misses the sound of her laugh, misses the life he almost led.

"I'm worried about you," he says softly, urgently.

"I'm okay," she answers, not meeting his eyes. She squeezes his hand, and then untangles her fingers from his, smiles that wan, almost-smile. "I'm gonna take a shower."

She gets up quickly, moves past him, and closes the bathroom door behind her. In a few moments, he can hear the water roaring, and he knows she's doing this to try and drown out the sound of muffled, choking sobs.

He contemplates knocking on the door, calling to her, but he feels suddenly tired, too tired to move, to talk, to deal with all this. And he knows that she will pretend the shower is too loud to hear him, won't answer.

So he sits by the window and stares out into the night, but he no longer sees it. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the cool black glass.

* * *

That night, he lies awake, watching shadows flicker across the ceiling, dancing patterns of light and dark. Beside him, she sleeps, the deep, empty sleep that comes after taking the pills the doctor has given her. He used to worry about her taking them, but now he is grateful, glad that she has some way to get away, if only for a little while. He even envies her peaceful, drug-drowsed sleep – for him, it is harder and harder to find.

When he does sleep, more and more often he finds himself dreaming an old dream, a dream of the desert that wakes him in the night with a gasp, thinking he can still feel thick, hot sand on his tongue, hear gunfire in his ears.

It's a dream he used to have a lot, one that has gotten less and less frequent as time has passed. And before, when once in a while the dream did come back, and he woke with a start in the bed beside her, she would have stirred at his sudden movement, would have reached out for him, still almost asleep, wrapped her arms around him from behind with a drowsy murmur.

Then, he could lay there, anchored safe in her arms, and wait for the nightmare to fade. He could let his breaths fall in time with hers, slow and gentle, in and out, in and out, like waves turning on a beach, until he slept again.

But now, her sleep is so deep that nothing can wake her, and he is left to lie awake, watching the hours creep slowly by. He has come to hate the night time, the darkness of it, the stillness, when there is nothing there to stop him from thinking about things he doesn't want to think about, remembering things he doesn't want to remember.

He remembers the hospital: the sharp, antiseptic smell of the hallways, the bright, glaring strip lighting overhead. He remembers being told about the baby, remembers swaying for a moment where he stood, thinking his knees were going to give way but somehow staying standing.

He remembers her face, pale and crushed, in the hospital bed. Remembers the doctor asking them, gently, if they would like to see their son, to hold him.

He remembers the day they got back from the hospital, coming into the apartment to find vase after vase of flowers set out on the kitchen counter, waxen white lilies that filled the room with a thick, cloying scent.

People had sent them - everyone, it seemed, who worked at the Montecito – Mike and Piper, Cooper, Mitch, Sam. Jillian had put them out, had left a note on the counter – "I'm sorry, honey," it read, "I wasn't sure what to do with the flowers. I thought you might like them."

Delinda had stood in the doorway, stiff and still, her arms wrapped around herself as though to ward off blows.

"Can you throw them out, please?" she asked him, suddenly, sharply, and he remembers how her voice shook.

"Dee…" he'd protested softly, and even then he wasn't sure why. He knew the flowers weren't going to help in any way, knew she didn't want to have to look at them, at a constant reminder of the baby's death. He didn't want to have to look at them either. But there seemed something wrong, somehow, about throwing them out, flowers as beautiful as those, with their fresh, clean petals, their sweet scent.

"Please," she'd said again, her voice louder, insistent. "Just get rid of them."

And then, he'd hesitated, and she snapped:

"For God's sake!" She screamed it fiercely, her voice tearing, and then she was crying, and not even noticing, and he looked at her face and realized how angry she was, furious. "The house looks like a goddamn funeral parlour!"

She'd pushed past him then, gathering the lilies up in her hands, stuffing them roughly into the trash.

"Delinda," he'd said, "Delinda, stop."

He stepped towards her and she whirled around, turned on him, her eyes wide and wet and blazing, her breath coming in sobs, her face angry, and despairing, and heartbroken, and beautiful.

"It isn't fair, Danny," she half-shouted, half-sobbed, "It isn't fair! There are all these people out there who hurt their children, who starve them, and beat them. We would never do that, we would never, never do that." Her voice was anguished; passionate and furious, "So how is it right that they get to keep their babies and we don't? How is that _right_?"

And then, as she screamed that last word, she had flung out a hand and swept one of the vases from the countertop onto the floor. And they had watched it shatter, had stood there looking down at shards of smashed glass lying in a pool of spilled water, crushed flowers and wet stems.

Tears streamed down her face and she did nothing to wipe them away, to stop them. She just looked at him, her grief wild and uncontainable, and he looked back.

"I don't know," he told her softly, and he remembers feeling then as though his heart would break at the sight of her, so raw and vulnerable and broken.

He remembers how unbearable it was to be so helpless, remembers thinking then that he would walk for miles on broken glass, and gladly, if he could just come home and have things be the way they should.

He wished that he could say something, anything. But there was nothing more to say. It was true: it wasn't fair, what happened. It was cruel, and senseless, and unfair, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

He'd reached out for her then, and pulled her to him, and she'd given way in his arms, not angry anymore, just lost; desolate and weeping.

He remembers how easy it was to hold her, then. Remembers how she slid slowly down to the floor, while he went with her.

"It's okay," he'd whispered, over and over, face buried in her thick hair, "It's okay, baby, it's okay."

She had just shaken her head, her face pressed against his shoulder, and he had known that she was right, that it wasn't okay, and that perhaps it never would be.

They'd sat together on the living room floor while she sobbed, harder and harder, and he held her; rocked her gently, tenderly; whispered helpless words of comfort into her hair.

They'd stayed there for the longest time.

* * *

It had seemed then like those first days were the hardest, when the pain was breathtaking, burning and searing, and the two of them could do nothing but cling to each other and let it wash over them. But he thinks now that in some ways that time was easier.

Then, at least, they had had each other. Then, at least, she would turn to him, hold onto him like he could save her. Now, she knows he can't, and he can feel her drifting away.

Now, he is almost afraid to come near her, afraid to touch her, for fear of hurting her more. Now, she pulls away when he tries to talk to her and she cries alone in the house, while he is out at work.

And then, when he is home, she will just sit for hours, silently, staring outside. And these are all things that scare him more, somehow, than the wild, desperate anger, the storms of sobs.

He loves her, more than anything, and she is all he has. He wishes he could find a way to make her see that.

Lying in bed, he sighs, covers his face with his hands. He doesn't want to think about this.

He slides soundlessly out from between the sheets and slips next door into the living room, where he can lie on the couch, with the TV flickering quietly in front of him, and drift in and out of muddled, broken dreams until the morning comes.

It has been four months now, and it feels like a lifetime.


	2. Don't Wait Up For Me

**Chapter 2: Don't Wait Up For Me**

* * *

She wakes early in the morning, and finds the bed cool and empty beside her. Faint sunlight drifts into the room, casting shadows over the floor and turning the cream bed sheets to a pale yellow.

She turns her face into the pillow and closes her eyes for a moment, ready to sleep again. She finds that she can sleep for hours on end now - all day if she can't make herself get up. Sleeping is the only time that it all goes away, and her head is clear and empty, and she doesn't have to think, or feel, or remember.

But now, she finds herself pushing back the sheets, stepping out of bed. She wonders where he is – she can't hear the shower running, and it's too early for him to be at work. She's cold getting out of the bed, and she wraps her arms around herself for warmth as she pads softly into the living room.

She sees him at once, asleep on the couch. It must be uncomfortable, she thinks: their sofa isn't long enough for him to lie straight, and so he sleeps at an awkward angle, head tilted back against the hard edge of the armrest. She wonders why he is sleeping here. She notices that the TV is on, silently playing the morning news, and she reaches to switch it off.

She sits on the edge of the coffee table, and watches him sleep. It has been a long time since she looked at him and really saw him, she realizes.

She finds herself trying to avoid being around him as much as she can. She knows that seeing her unhappy hurts him, and she knows that he blames himself for not being able to fix it. And she doesn't want him to do that, doesn't want to hurt him, but, at the same time, she just can't stop feeling this way, can't do anything to make it seem like things are getting any better.

So, it's easier just to pull away, to go to bed early and get up late, to take long showers, to sit by the window and watch the city go by, and pretend she doesn't see him watching her, his eyes anxious and his expression tense and unhappy.

Now, she studies his face in the early morning light. He has a beautiful face. But he looks pale now, and tired, with dark circles like bruises under his eyes, and it's been a couple of days since the last time he shaved.

She sighs quietly. She wants to be able to talk to him about it, to share it with him, wants to want to try and start to put all the pieces of their life slowly back together. But she knows that she isn't, and doesn't. She is just too tired, too worn out with sorrow, to do anything more than she is doing now.

Looking at him, she feels a sudden, aching rush of tenderness, and she reaches out to touch him, to trace the outline of his face with light and gentle fingers. She remembers, unexpectedly, what it was like to fall asleep in strong, warm arms, the beat of his heart the only sound in the world, and to want nothing more than that.

She wants to tell him that she is sorry, that she loves him.

Instead, she starts to get up and move away, sits back down when she sees him stirring. His lashes flicker, and his eyes open, warm and brown and sleep-hazed, and fix on her.

"Hey, baby," he mumbles sleepily, his hand in her hair, brushing it back from her face.

"Hey," she whispers back, "What are you doing sleeping in here?"

He looks around, bemused for a moment by where he is.

"Oh." He shrugs. "I couldn't sleep, came to watch TV." She nods. "Wha' time is it?" he asks blearily, starting to sit up.

"It's almost six."

"I gotta go to work," he sighs, tilting himself into an upright sitting position. "You should go back to sleep," he tells her softly, "You look tired."

"Yeah, maybe," she says. She feels somehow exhausted already.

He leans forward, kisses her lightly on the forehead, and gets up. She finds she can't remember the last time he kissed her on the mouth, the last time she reached out to kiss him, hold him.

He trails a hand over her shoulder as he moves past her, heads towards the bathroom.

She sits perched on the coffee table, wondering how things got to be like this.

* * *

She is lying in bed again when he leaves for work. He leans over her to kiss her hair, his cheek brushing against hers, his skin cool and smooth.

"I'll see you later," he says as he moves away from the bed, makes for the door. She raises herself on one elbow.

"Danny?" she calls softly, and he stops at the door, turns to her. She doesn't really know why she calls to him. She just wants to see his face.

"Have a good day," she says, after a moment, and he smiles.

"You, too," he tells her, going through the charade same as her, as though she really does think he can have a good day at work anymore, as though he really does think she will do something more today than lie in bed and wish for it all to go away.

She nods just slightly, and then he slips away through the door and is gone.

* * *

She is starting to wonder what will to happen to them. She knows things can't go on like this forever, knows they are drifting slowly farther and farther apart.

It was all so easy before. In the beginning, when all that they needed was love and sex, and they had plenty of both. It was easy and fun and everything worked.

And then there was the baby, there was a whole future to be planned for and dreamed about.

And maybe there were times when they were scared, and maybe there were times when she was afraid that this wasn't what he wanted, that she was dragging him into something that he was later going to regret.

But then, there were so many other times when she knew that they were doing the right thing, when she knew that he loved her, knew that he did want it, all of it, and so did she.

Now, she doesn't know what they have.

She knows that she loves him, but she doesn't know that that will be enough, not now that she has almost stopped believing that they can have any kind of life together after this. Not now that she can only picture the future as some long, empty road that she doesn't know she has the energy to follow.

And she knows that he loves her, knows that whatever happens, however bad things get and however much she tries to pull away, he will stay and try to make it work.

But she knows, too, that if things go on the way they are, then one day he will only be staying because he's a good man, and because he loved her once, and because he had a life with her that they never got to live. And she knows that this isn't a reason to stay with someone.

And so the couple of times that he has tried to talk about getting married, about the question that he asked her the night before the baby died, she has turned away, talked about something else. Because she doesn't want that for him: she wants him to be happy.

She tells herself that he could be happy with someone else, that eventually he could heal over, let these last few awful months fade away.

And she knows that can't happen with her around, not when she feels like one great, open wound, as though all her skin has been flayed away, so that everything hurts: every word, every touch, every breath.

* * *

Four months ago, everything was different. And then she came to in a hospital bed, and everything changed.

She woke in the dark, in a shadowed room with monitors flickering dimly around her bed, and Danny sitting in a hard, plastic chair beside her, his head resting in his hands.

She didn't remember what had happened at first, didn't know for a moment what she was doing there.

"Danny…" she'd murmured, confused, and scared.

He looked up quickly, saying, "Dee?" He leaned forward, smiling with relief, his eyes on her face, his hand smoothing back her hair.

"Hey," he was saying, his voice quiet and hoarse and tender, "Hey. You're okay. You're okay." His eyes were wet.

And then she remembered; remembers now the cold, still dread settling over her skin.

She looked at his face, haggard and haunted, his eyes dark and hollow, and she knew.

He took a breath, as though about to speak, but the words caught in his throat. He didn't have to say it – she knew it – but all of a sudden, she just needed to be sure, needed to have it said out loud, because she felt like she was suffocating, lying there, waiting for it, reaching for breaths that didn't come.

"We lost the baby," she whispered, "didn't we." It was a statement rather than a question: she knew the answer.

He swallowed then, and nodded. She made a sound that was something between a moan and a muffled scream, a sound she almost didn't realize was coming from her.

He whispered, "Dee…" and she reached out for him, clung to him, her fists gripping his hair, her sobs coming huge and deep, racking her body and leaving her gasping for air. He took her in his arms, held her tight, and she could feel his shoulders shake, couldn't tell which sobs were his and which were hers.

She thought, then, that it hurt so much it would kill her.

But instead, it kept on hurting, the pain brutal and vindictive and only seeming to get worse with time.

The time in the hospital passed in a blur of waking and crying and just lying there, too exhausted to cry any more. The doctors came, gave her sedatives that let her sleep, allowed her a brief escape.

"They're just gonna give you something," she remembers him telling her softly, "Something to help you sleep."

"Please, Danny, please," she had whispered back, delirious with tears by then and wanting nothing more than for it just to stop, "I don't wanna wake up this time."

He had just looked back at her, wordlessly, and his eyes were agony.

At that moment, she would have given anything just to be able to close her eyes and never have to open them.

* * *

Now, she isn't sure what she feels.

Sometimes, she is hollow, weightless, like the wind could sweep her away. Other times, she is leaden-heavy, unable to move under the aching weight of it. Her emotions leave her drained, exhausted, and most of the time she tries not to feel any of them at all. It is easier like that.

The days float by, and she barely seems to notice them passing. She lives in the strange half-light of the apartment, the drapes closed to keep the sunlight out. She sleeps for hour after hour, and wakes to find herself more tired than she was before.

She has bad days, when she drags herself out of bed some time in the afternoon, and sits under a blanket on the couch, not really watching the daytime soap operas and talk shows that play on the TV.

And then, she has worse days, the days when she can't bear to get out of bed at all, when she sleeps, or she lies there, when she lets herself remember, when she puts a hand to her face and finds it wet, and realizes she has been crying all this time, and hasn't even noticed.

Sometimes, she has days that aren't quite so bad, when she manages to get up, to dress, to venture out to the store if they have run out of milk, or cereal. She catches sight of a face she knows in the shop window, and she almost doesn't recognize the person, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that no longer really fit, hair pulled back into a tattered ponytail, face pale and eyes lifeless, who looks back at her.

Her mother comes by a couple of days a week, to talk to her, check up on her. She brings meals in plastic containers, which Danny reheats in the microwave in the evenings, and she pretends that it is perfectly normal for Delinda to still be in pajamas and a robe at four in the afternoon, to have not left the apartment all week.

Delinda loves her mother, she really does, and she is grateful to have her back. But whenever Jillian is there, fluttering about the apartment, insisting on opening windows and tidying up, she can't help just waiting for it to be time for her mother to leave again, so that she can sit alone in the quiet. So that she doesn't have to make an effort, or try to fake a smile.

It's times like this that she misses her father the most – he's the only one who wouldn't need more from her than she was able to give.

She hates herself for being like this – for wanting, when she is with her mother, or with Danny, just to be away. But she doesn't know what there is that she can do about it. At the moment, it is all she can do to keep going with the half-life she's living.

She tries just to concentrate on getting through the days. On simply keeping on breathing.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think. Should I keep going, or just leave it at this?


	3. Things Fall Apart

Author's Note: Thank you so, so much to the people who read and reviewed the story so far! I hope you continue to like it :)

This chapter was a little tricky, and I'm still kind of unsure about how it came out, so any comments or feedback to let me know what you thought (good or bad!) would really be appreciated!

* * *

**Chapter 3: Things Fall Apart**

* * *

He spends the morning standing at the window of his office, staring outside. It's a beautiful day, the sky a clear, vivid blue, and he looks out at it until his eyes start to burn and he has to look away.

On his desk, stacks of accounts and memos sit waiting to be read through and signed off on, and just looking at them is exhausting.

So he doesn't. He thinks that perhaps he will stay here by the window, just a little longer.

But he knows that eventually it all has to be done. He knows that he can't stay here all day, locked away in his office, hoping to be left alone. He has a casino to run; he has problems to deal with and people to talk to.

He finds himself trying, now, to avoid other people as much as he can: people who all look at him with the same expression of silent sympathy, so that the only thing he sees when he looks them in the eyes is his loss reflected back at him.

He's learned, over time, not to look at anyone directly. Has learned, too, how to accept their condolences, how to say a quiet "Thank you" and to mean it. He knows, after all, that they are only trying to be kind, that they don't mean to hurt him.

The worst are the people who don't know, the people who ask after Delinda and the baby, words that hit like a sucker punch every time.

Then, somehow, he has to find a way to keep his face still and his voice steady as he explains, that there were complications, that the baby was stillborn. To nod, silently, to their awkward, horrified apologies.

It is a lot easier, he finds, just to stay away whenever he can.

Sometimes, he can start falling back into the rhythm of things. When he's up in the surveillance room, listening to Mike joke easily with Mitch, and he can pretend like everything is the way it was, before everything changed.

But then, other times, he just can't. He and Mike will go down to Opus for a beer, and he will find that he can't keep up with the laughter and the jokes, can't hold his concentration long enough to follow the conversation. Words die somewhere in the back of his throat, and when he tries to remember them, they're just gone.

At these times, Mike will ask him how Delinda's doing, and he will answer that she's fine, or okay, or not so bad. He doesn't know what else to say. Mike will nod, then, and the two of them will sit, silent for a moment, looking down into their glasses and swirling around their beers.

And often, Danny will find himself wondering if Mike is thinking the same thing he is: how strange it is that not so long ago, Mike was the one envying him the life he had.

Whereas now, it is Danny who is envious, Danny who would give anything, and more, for the quiet happiness Mike has with Piper, for the simple, easy sense of being in the right place, at the right time, that he and Delinda had before.

He thinks that he would be happy with just the promise of that feeling. With the promise that, one day, things would start to go back to the way they were, when he could look at her and know that, somehow, everything was going to be okay.

At the moment, it's getting harder and harder to believe that anything will ever feel like that again.

Standing at the window, he finds himself thinking of Delinda, sitting at home and crying, or lying in bed, not really asleep, but not awake either. The thought of it leaves him feeling helpless, and angry, and exhausted, all at once.

He sighs wearily, looks around the room, at the walls that seem to be slowly closing in on him.

He feels like he can't just stand still anymore. He feels like maybe, if he can just keep moving, he can shake these thoughts from his head and forget for a while.

* * *

He goes down to the lobby, bright with sunlight and bustling with people. He sidesteps all of them – guests checking in and checking out, busboys wheeling luggage trolleys – and makes quickly for the wide glass doors that lead outside.

As he passes the concierge desk, though, Piper catches his eye, signalling to him imploringly with her eyebrows. On the other side of the desk, a stocky, middle-aged guy in shorts and a flowered shirt is hassling her, loudly, about his late room service.

Danny sighs tiredly, and stops in his path toward the doors. As he turns and walks reluctantly over, he tries to remind himself that it's his job to deal with problems like this, whether he thinks he has the energy and the patience for it or not.

He draws closer, and interrupts the guest's rant with practiced politeness, biting back the urge to tell the guy that whatever his problem is, he should just get over it, and fast.

"I'm Danny McCoy, I'm President of Operations here," he says, smiling tightly, "Is there a problem?"

He wants to get this settled, quickly, so that he can get outside. So that he can find somewhere to walk around for a moment or two, to clear his head and practice taking slow, deep breaths.

Should have just gone up to the roof, he thinks irritably. He seems to go up there a lot, now, when his office feels too small, and the casino floor too big. When he needs somewhere just to hide for a while.

"The _problem_," the guest spits back at him, cutting his thoughts short, "is that this stupid bitch won't just give me my money back!"

The man turns a red, livid face to Danny and glares at him for a moment. Then, he turns around, returns to berating Piper, who bristles but stays silent.

And all of a sudden, Danny can feel his heart hammering against his ribs, can feel his breath choking him in his throat, blood pounding furiously in his ears. Anger, sudden and huge, rushes through him like a riptide. He puts a hand on the man's arm.

"Okay, pal, that's enough," he says, quietly and firmly.

"Hey!" the guest shouts, shaking his arm free violently, "Get out of my face would you, jack-off!"

And before Danny really knows what he's doing, he's grabbing onto the guy's arm again, hard, and twisting it up behind his back, far enough back that one sharp jerk could snap it.

"Come on," he growls, the harsh edge to his voice surprising even him.

He hauls the man roughly across the lobby and shoves him out through the doors, so hard that the guy trips and falls on the front steps, sprawling on the sidewalk and staring up at Danny with a mixture of shock and outrage.

And Danny stands at the top of the steps and stares back, seething.

"Don't come back," he tells the man darkly, glowering at him, breathing hard.

"Danny?" Piper says, coming up behind him, alarmed.

She looks at him anxiously. For a moment, they are both silent. Danny bites his lip.

He knows he shouldn't have done that, that he should have kept calm, dealt with the guy the right way. God knows he's come across plenty of idiots like this one in the time he's worked here, and he's never reacted like that before.

He isn't even sure why he did it. He was just angry, suddenly. Angry with that guy, with the belittling sneer on the man's face as he turned to him. Angry about the baby, and Delinda, and everything falling apart. Angry because there is nothing he wouldn't do if it could make things right, and even that just isn't enough.

"Little bastard deserved it," he mutters to Piper now, and he starts to walk. He moves swiftly down the front steps, ignoring the commotion starting around him, ignoring the guest yelling at him, incensed, and Piper calling his name.

He just keeps on walking. He simply wants to get as far away as he possibly can.

* * *

He walks and walks for what feels like hours, not stopping, staring straight ahead to avoid catching sight of anyone he knows. He has no idea of what he's doing, or where he's going.

He knows that people will have started to worry, and to talk. He knows how fast word spreads at the Montecito, like there's a special intercom built in for situations like this one. By now, everyone will be thinking that he's lost it, flipped out, and – he doesn't know anymore – maybe they're right.

He thinks he'll call Mike in a few minutes and explain, once his hands have uncurled themselves from tight-clenched fists, and his heart has stopped thundering so hard in his chest.

He should call Cooper, too, he thinks, should just go back there now and apologize. He knows how difficult and tiring it is trying to fix problems like the one he's just created.

But he doesn't call, doesn't turn back. Every time he tries to tell himself that it was stupid, and wrong, to lose control the way he did, this other voice in the back of his head, this voice that's just angry at the world, tells him that the guy was a jerk, and he got what was coming to him, simple as that.

He knows, though, that it's not that simple. He knows that, if he wanted to, Cooper could fire him for this.

For some reason, the thought of it doesn't trouble him like he knows it should. Instead, he feels the calm stillness that comes after a storm. He feels like whatever happens, he no longer cares.

He passes a lonely-looking bar off the strip and contemplates, for a moment, going in. Sitting in a corner booth and just getting flat-off-his-ass drunk.

But he knows he won't; he knows he can do better than that.

For now, he just keeps on walking. His legs feel strangely heavy, like for a long time he's been walking, weightless, through water, and now he's hit dry land again.

He thinks that he knows this feeling; he's been here before. That night, when he'd just gotten back from Iraq, when his thoughts were eating him alive and he could barely see straight. He remembers this hollow, dizzying sensation: like falling and reaching, emptily, for something to hold.

He wishes, suddenly, that Ed were here, as he was back then. Just to sit with him, like he did that night, and tell him, "I know". To promise him that, in the end, he would be okay. That things would get easier with time.

He is never sure, now, if he is grateful to Ed for what he did, for firing that bullet in the Desert Tavern parking lot, or just furious with him, for throwing it all away, for giving up everything he had and loved because of something Danny should, and would, have done.

He finds himself thinking at times that maybe things would have been better if he had been the one to take that shot, if he had been the one to run, to vanish. He thinks, wearily, that Ed probably would have done a lot better job of helping Delinda than he is managing to do.

As it is, he just feels like he's letting Ed down, and Jillian too, as well as Delinda, because they trusted him to take care of their daughter, to protect her, and now all he can do is stand here and watch as she fades away before his eyes.

* * *

He keeps walking until, eventually, he finds himself standing outside the field where he and Mike used to coach the Montecito's Pee Wee football team, years ago.

He knows he should go home, or back to the casino, but he can't face, just now, doing either. Instead, he slips in through the gate, and finds somewhere to sit, looking out over the silent field.

Here, alone in the empty bleachers, he lets himself think about the baby.

He can't help feeling guilty somehow, about the way he felt before. About being scared, about not being sure that he was ready, not being sure that he wanted this, not yet.

He'd known that he wanted it one day, yes. But then everything had happened, so soon and so fast that it had just seemed unreal to him at first.

He'd been worried – about what would happen to the two of them, with the easy, carefree life they had suddenly changing completely.

And he'd worried, too, at the thought of, all at once, being responsible for something so important. There were so many things he could screw up, so many wrong choices he and Delinda could end up making somewhere down the line, so many moments when he might close his eyes or turn his head, just at the second when he shouldn't have.

He hadn't really known what he felt about it: an unfamiliar mixture of anxiety and apprehension and excitement that left him just a little overwhelmed.

Slowly, though, things had begun to come clear. He remembers seeing the ultrasound picture Delinda had brought home, remembers sitting on the edge of the bed and just staring at it, awestruck. Because, all of a sudden, it had been real - there was their baby, his baby.

He remembers feeling, then, the first, sharp prickings of something like love – the kind that was tight in his chest and hot in his eyes – a fierce, protective affection for this small, vulnerable, tadpole-like creature, with buds for limbs and a tiny, beating heart.

It had taken a while, but in the end he had been sure. He'd begun to realize that he could do this, and it wouldn't be so hard. And then, sometimes, when he pictured the future, instead of that slightly panicked feeling he'd had at first, he'd felt something else: a strange, giddy kind of happiness.

Now, he takes a long breath, presses the heels of his hands against his eye sockets like he did when he was a kid, seeing stars.

He has tried, over the last four months, to think about this as little as he can. To trap everything up and just keep going.

After it happened, he'd gone ruthlessly through their apartment, clearing away anything he could find that might make them remember. He'd worked quickly, determinedly, trying not to allow himself even a moment where he could stop and think.

He'd packed up all the things that meant too much, the things that he just couldn't, just then, bring himself to throw out; had put them carefully into a box, tucked it away on a shelf at the back of the closet. He'd told himself that he'd deal with it eventually, but, in the end, he never had.

And then, when he'd done everything he could and there was no way to stop himself from feeling it any more, he'd sat on the floor with his back against the foot of the bed, and ducked his head against his knees, and cried.

Afterwards, he'd gone into the bathroom, scrubbed his face clean with cold water. He'd gone back to the hospital, where Delinda was sleeping, and he'd started what he's been doing ever since: forcing himself forward through the days and trying never to have to sit still and remember.

* * *

But he sits still now, in the cool, thin evening light, and he remembers. He watches as the sun sets, sinking below the horizon and painting the sky with bold, sweeping strokes of red and pink and orange, and he lets his thoughts drift to Delinda.

He finds himself remembering the first time he saw her, this blonde-haired girl smiling a coy, mischievous smile at him from across a crowded room, so beautiful that for a moment he couldn't breathe.

He thinks of that smile, now.

He thinks of the way that she sings country songs off-key in the shower, the way that kissing her never seems to last long enough, the way that every room feels empty till that moment when she walks in the door.

He thinks that there are so many things in his life that he feels like he's gotten wrong somehow, so many things he wishes he had the chance to take back and do differently.

She's the only thing he knows he got completely right.

With a concentrated effort, he pulls himself together, wipes his hands over his face and gets to his feet. He tells himself that he can't, won't, let things keep going on like this, won't let her keep on slipping.

He tells himself that there has to be something, just something, he can do to hold the two of them in place.

He takes in a slow, deep breath, and he gets ready to start the long walk home.


	4. The End Of A Day

Author's Note: Thank you so, so much to the people who read and reviewed the last chapter! I really appreciate it :)

I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to update – thank you to anyone who's stuck with me!

I hope you do enjoy it, but please let me know if there's anything that seems wrong or that you don't like. (Or anything that you do!)

* * *

**Chapter 4: The End Of A Day**

* * *

The knock at the door surprises her. The only people who ever come to the apartment now are Danny and her mother, and they both have a key.

She thinks of just staying where she is, curled up on the sofa, waiting for whoever it is to go away. But in the end she gets to her feet and goes to the door. Opening it, she finds Cooper standing out in the hallway.

It's been a long time since she's seen him. He came by, about a week or so after they lost the baby, and sat with them for a while. He was kind, and he managed to say the right things somehow, and he didn't stay for long.

"Hello, Delinda," he says now, greeting her with a nod, a quiet smile.

"Hi," she answers softly.

She looks across at him, hesitantly, wondering what he's doing here in the middle of the day.

"I'm sorry to disturb you like this," he continues, apologetically, "but is Danny there?"

She just frowns at him for a moment, confused.

"No," she says slowly, "I thought he was at work."

"Oh," is Cooper's only response. His expression is unreadable.

Anxiety flickers briefly through her, a small, tight fist closing in her throat. It's almost a surprise, to feel something other than the deep, still misery she has all but gotten used to by now.

"Never mind," Cooper says, quickly, calmly, "I think there's been a misunderstanding."

He smiles reassuringly, and even though she knows that that's not quite true, that there's something he's not telling her, she nods her head and decides just to believe him. She decides she doesn't want to know if there is something wrong - she doesn't think she would even know any more what to do if there was.

For a moment they both stand in the doorway, not saying anything. She thinks that she should ask him in, offer him a drink, but she's suddenly conscious of the state of the apartment, of the dishes in the sink and the old blanket hanging over the sofa, the closed drapes and the slightly musty, airless smell.

She's aware, too, of how she must look to him: like a wreck in a faded grey bathrobe, with her skin ash-pale, like she hasn't seen the sun in weeks, and her hair pulled back into a tangled knot, and her eyes tired and swallowed in shadows.

So she stays silent, hovering at the open door.

There is a long, uncertain pause, and then Cooper gives her a thoughtful look and asks her, very gently, "How are you, Delinda?"

She opens her mouth to say, "I'm okay," because that is what she says, parrot-like, to everyone: to Danny, to her mother, to Mike and Sam when they call. She knows that none of them really believes it; it's just easier to say, and easier to hear, than the truth would be.

Now, though, with Cooper looking her steadily in the eyes, she falters. She thinks that he's maybe the only person who's asked the question like he's expecting an honest answer. It's the way her father would ask it - like whatever she says, he will understand.

She swallows back tears and she tells him, softly, "I feel like I'm dying."

Slowly, Cooper nods. Neither of them speaks for a moment.

It makes her feel suddenly braver, telling the truth about it. She thinks that since she's been honest with him, he'll now have to do the same for her.

Quickly, before she can change her mind about wanting to know, she asks, "Why are you looking for Danny?"

Cooper hesitates, and then he explains.

She listens anxiously. It doesn't sound like Danny. She's seen him get mad before, of course: a sudden, swift flash of anger. But not like that, not without a reason.

She worries. She knows that this isn't something that would have happened four months ago.

"Will there be any trouble?" she asks, as her mind turns to lawsuits and legal complaints.

Cooper responds with a half-shake of his head.

"I'm taking care of it," he tells her simply, and she doesn't press him for more. She knows that Cooper doesn't like to explain things. Other people find it frustrating; she has learned, with years of experience, just to let things like that go.

"Thank you," she says, and not just for that. She has forgotten how much she liked talking to him. He makes her think, just a little, of her father.

"Well," Cooper says, "I should be going." He smiles at her again, a kind smile, and seems about to leave. But then he pauses, turns back to face her.

"I do know how it feels, you know," he tells her now, compassion in his quiet voice.

Delinda is used to steeling herself against those words, used to feeling like nobody, really, can know how this feels.

She remembers her mother saying the same thing, the day after they came home from the hospital. She remembers anger and sorrow rising up like a bitter taste in the back of her throat, remembers snapping sharply at her mother, "Of course you don't!"

Her mother had flinched slightly, as though the words were a slap, and Delinda had regretted them at once, but it had been just too late by then, and she had been just too angry and tired and hurt to take them back. So she'd brushed quickly past her mother instead, shut herself in the bathroom and locked the door. Danny had started to go after her, and her mother had gently caught onto his sleeve, stopped him.

Delinda had sat on the bathroom floor, listening to her mother and Danny talking in muted voices, hating herself for saying that to her mother, hating all those people who didn't know, and who would never have to. She covered her face with her hands, thinking that her mother did understand - she lost Nessa, after all.

And she knows that Cooper understands too, remembers him telling her once that he knew what it was like to have a family fall apart.

"I know you don't believe me now," Cooper says, "But it does start to fade." He touches her on the arm, very lightly. "You just have to remember what's most important."

He doesn't say anything further, and she doesn't ask him what he means. He is right: she doesn't believe him, and she is sick of being told that things will get better when she knows, _knows_, that they can't. But she lets him say it. She knows he's trying to help.

He leaves, and she waits a moment in the doorway. She almost wishes he would stay.

* * *

Later, she stands in the bathroom, looking steadily at her reflection in the mirror. She doesn't think she could feel any further removed from the person that she used to be. She runs a hand through her wet hair, her fingers snagging on knots and tangles, and she remembers a moment, months ago, standing in front of the mirror, gathering her hair up, then letting it fall, deciding what to do with it, and Danny leaning over, absently twirling a strand of it around his finger, saying, "I like it when you leave it down." It feels, like everything from before does now, like something so far away it could almost have happened to somebody else.

But still, she leaves her hair down, for old times' sake. She turns away from the unhappy face in the mirror and goes into the bedroom, where her suitcase lies open on the bed. It doesn't take her long to pack.

The truth is that she just doesn't want to try any more. They've been stuck in this strange, empty, nothing place for such a long time now, and she can't help thinking that if they stay here much longer then they're both going to go out of their minds with the stillness and the waiting and the endless same routine of guilt and grief and silence.

She tells herself that this is for the best. That he has tried, and so, in the only way she could, has she, but that in the end it was never going to work. There was simply nowhere for them to go, after what happened.

She closes the suitcase up and takes it to the living room, sets it down by the sofa. She sits, and watches as the room grows dark around her, and she tries to picture a life that doesn't have Danny in it. Somehow, she can't quite manage to see it. She's never had to do anything on her own before.

But, she finds, it's harder still to imagine a life with him. To imagine getting up in the mornings and going to work, and doing all those hundreds of tiny things that they used to do every day so easily.

She feels as though she's forgotten how to live like that now, feels as though everything she used to love, everything that used to matter so much, no longer really means anything at all.

She thinks of what Cooper said, about what was most important, and though she knows this isn't really what he meant, she can't help feeling like at the moment what's most important is just managing to stay afloat. And she tells herself that is a lot easier to do when there is just one of you.

* * *

She waits until it's dark outside, or as dark, at least, as it ever really gets in Las Vegas, and she starts to worry. She tries calling his cell phone but every time she gets his voice sounding muffled and distant on the answering machine.

She's about to try again when, finally, the door opens and there he is. His tie is loose and his collar undone, his hair rumpled. He looks exhausted, dead on his feet.

He sees her and stops, doesn't say anything for a moment. He offers her a tired half-smile.

"Where were you?" she asks, and she hears a little tremor in her voice, "I was worried."

"I'm sorry," he tells her.

"Cooper told me what happened," she says. She watches him.

"I'm sorry," he says again, wearily. "I snapped out." He makes a gesture, an apologetic shrug.

She looks at him, thinking that Danny is her best friend, and he used to tell her everything. And now, she doesn't know what he's thinking, can't guess at what's behind his dark, tired eyes.

He comes a little closer, away from the door, and he shakes his head slightly.

"We can't keep going like this," he says, eventually.

She lifts her head, looks up at him.

"I know," she answers simply.

Her eyes follow his, or maybe his follow hers, to the suitcase that stands beside the sofa, and a heavy silence fills the room. She can feel him watching her, at once confused and comprehending, asking for an answer. But she can't look back.

She says, softly, to her hands, "I'm gonna go stay at my mom's for a while."

"What?" he says, though she can tell from the sharp edge to his voice that he heard her.

She takes a deep breath and steadies her voice. "She has a spare room, and…" She can't get much further. She keeps her eyes down, can't look at him as she says it. She doesn't think she could say it if she looked at him.

"Dee, this is crazy," he answers, "You're not goin' anywhere."

"I think I should," she says quietly, honestly. She meets his eyes now. "I can't do this, Danny. I can't go back to the way I was and I can't be okay the way you want me to be. I just can't." She shakes her head, searches for a way to say it right, "And I just think maybe it would be easier if we weren't around each other all the time, if we had some… space."

He looks at her, eyes narrowed. "That's what you want?" he asks, "Space?" She can't quite judge his tone – perplexed, disbelieving, uncertain, maybe even angry. His eyes give nothing away.

She wants to tell him that she wants it, and she doesn't. That she wants him to be here, and at the same time she just wants to be left alone. That all she wants, really, is to wake up in the morning and feel like she can breathe.

"I just don't want you to keep hoping that everything's gonna go back to normal when I don't think it can," she tells him, "I can't imagine doing things like I used to, I can't imagine being that person again, and I just…" She sighs. "And that isn't fair to you."

He smiles slightly bitterly. "Who said anything about fair?" he says.

He hesitates, and then he comes nearer, sits across from her on the edge of the coffee table. Carefully, he brushes back her hair with his hand, tucks it behind her ear.

"Listen," he says, gently, "I'm not expecting anything of you. I know you have to give it time."

She tells herself to just say this quickly. That this way it might hurt more now, but less later on.

"That's what I mean," she tells him, "I can't do this. I can't go back and start over, however much time I have." She looks at him, tries to make him see. "I'm sorry," she says, and she is.

He lets out a frustrated sigh, losing patience.

"Come on, Dee," he exclaims, in a voice that's urgent, reaching, "You can't just lie in bed for the rest of your life. There are things you could do, things that might help - "

But she is tired, too tired for this. She thinks that it might be wrong, it might be selfish, but she can't try any longer. She wishes he would understand that she wants to lie in bed for the rest of her life and that's all there is to it, wishes he would just see this, and let her be.

"Please, Danny," she says, almost in a whisper, "Don't do this."

He looks at her a moment, then shakes his head, exhausted. He turns away from her, runs his hand back through his hair and looks out of the window, at the lights of the city glowing in the glass.

She doesn't want to cry, but her eyes fill even so.

"I should have died, too," she says, after a time, more to herself than to him.

"Don't even say that," he answers quickly, almost roughly.

"It would have been easier," she says. She's been thinking it for so long that saying it is almost a relief. "For both of us. For you. Then you could find someone, someone who'd make you happy."

She wants him to see that this makes sense. That this is a way out for him, as well as for her.

But Danny doesn't see it like that. He stares at her now with a mixture of anger and disbelief, stands so that suddenly he towers over her.

"Delinda," he demands sharply, "what is wrong with you? If you had died too, if that had happened, how could you possibly think I could ever have been _happy_? How could you possibly think that?"

He looks across at her. His jaw is set and his eyes burn. She is silent, taken aback at his sudden vehemence.

"You're not making me unhappy," he says, "You can't think things like that." He says it firmly, fiercely. "And you can't just give up like that either. It only has to be like this forever if you let it."

He keeps on looking at her for a moment longer, waiting for a response, and then finally he looks away, takes a deep breath and blows it out.

He comes over, sits beside her on the sofa.

"We can figure something out," he tells her, his voice cracked and tired, like tires rolling over gravel, "I promise you we can."

She looks at him, thinking that they both know that, in truth, he can't promise her that. But she knows, too, that Danny wouldn't promise something he didn't think he could do.

She thinks of what he's said and she realizes that whenever she's thought about trying to survive this, about the two of them trying to stay afloat, she's always imagined it as being harder for two people than for one. She's always thought that, eventually, one has to drag the other under.

She realizes she's never seen it, until now, the way he sees it: that with two people, one can hold the other up.

She wants to believe he's right, she really does.

"I don't want to be so unhappy any more," she confesses, finally, and beside her he nods silently. "But I don't want to keep going, waiting for it to stop, either."

It's the only explanation she has. She wants to sleep until she wakes up one morning and she doesn't feel this way any more. The thought of actually getting through the days, of giving it time until the feeling fades, terrifies her.

Danny asks, and his voice is gentler now, "Why don't you just stay and try?"

She thinks that she has spent enough time in a casino to know his expression by now, because this is the last hand, and it's his last card, and he's shooting the moon, and getting ready to miss.

She doesn't know what to say. It would be so much easier just to tell him that she can't. But she does love him, Danny who is kind and stubborn and loyal to a fault, and just at that moment that she wants to let go, the smallest part of her insists on hanging on.

She doesn't know if this will makes things better, or worse, but she tells him quietly, "Okay." She can try.

He looks at her for a moment, and his eyes soften. He smiles.

"Okay," he repeats.

He cups her face with his hand, traces her cheekbone with his thumb. She presses her face into his shoulder and closes her eyes, and for a second it could almost be before again, as he whispers sweet nothings and kisses her hair.


	5. Further On Up The Road

Disclaimer: I still don't own _Las Vegas_. I also don't own _Take It Easy_ by The Eagles.

Author's Note: Thank you so, so much to everybody who has read and reviewed the story so far! Your reviews have really encouraged me to keep going, and I'm very, very grateful :)

I'm incredibly sorry for taking so long with this yet again – all I can say in my defence is that I haven't had very much free time to work on the story, and I struggled a lot with some parts of this chapter. I really am sorry and I'll try to do better next time, but knowing me I probably shouldn't promise anything. If you're still reading, then thank you so much for being so patient and sticking with me! I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

* * *

**Chapter 5: Further On Up The Road**

* * *

He drives home at night, the city a kaleidoscope of coloured lights on the windscreen and the wind warm on his face. The radio plays softly, a song with words he half-remembers, The Eagles gently telling him, _Take it easy…_

He's thinking about going home, about the evening ahead, and he finds – and it's a heady, almost unfamiliar feeling – that he's looking forward to it.

The last few weeks, since the night that she almost left, have been easier than he thought they would at the start. Things have begun to settle, slowly, into some kind of a routine – not quite a new one, and not quite the old one, but something that falls somewhere in between.

There are still bad days, of course, and worse days, but they've grown gradually fewer and further between than they were. He still gets the feeling, as he makes his way down the hall, an anxious, shuddering dread that rises up behind his ribs as he draws closer, but it's fainter, lighter, than it used to be, enough that as he opens the door and goes inside he can brush it away.

Sometimes, now, there are days when he's on his way home and he can start to feel as he does tonight – easier, somehow; hopeful.

Thinking back, as he slows the car and stops for a red light, to that night, the night he walked back home in the dark, it feels a long, long time ago. He sits, tapping his thumb idly on the steering wheel in time to the beat on the radio, and he remembers the two of them, unpacking her suitcase in their bedroom, the only light a dim gleam from outside.

He remembers their hands brushing occasionally as they unfolded shirts and sweaters, remembers neither of them saying much as they did it – both, he guessed, simply exhausted by everything that had already been said, and left unsaid, that night.

Afterwards, too worn out to bother with undressing, or even with getting under the sheets, they lay together on the bed, side by side and facing each other. He remembers running his hand lightly up and down her arm, tracing the same line from shoulder to elbow and back again, over and over, just glad to be able to touch her, exhaustion driving everything else from his mind except the thought that she was still there.

"I missed you," he murmured, hazily, and fell asleep before he heard her answer, if she had one.

He remembers waking early the next morning knowing that this was the start of something, and that if he, if they, couldn't do it, couldn't make it work this time, then probably they never would. It was a thought that filled him with equal parts fear and a kind of desperate determination.

He turned to look at her, asleep on top of the crumpled sheets with her hair awash over the pillow and her hands curled up into empty fists, and he remembers thinking, then, that he just couldn't bear to keep always losing everyone in the end. He watched her sleep and told himself, with a confidence he wasn't really sure he felt, that somehow, between the two of them, they'd figure something out as he'd promised her they would.

He left as quietly as he could that morning, trying not to wake her, and drove over to the Montecito. He headed straight up to Cooper's office to apologize, feeling a little like a guilty schoolkid summoned to see the principal as he stood there, straight-backed, at the desk, waiting. Cooper just sat back in his chair, fixed Danny with a look that was at once stern and somehow sympathetic.

"I'm sorry," Danny said, finally. "About what happened. I know I screwed up."

Cooper nodded, contemplatively, and Danny couldn't tell if the gesture was intended to reassure him, or just to make him nervous. He took a deep breath and added, firmly, "Believe me when I tell you that nothing like this will ever happen again."

Cooper considered.

"I believe you," he answered, gently. He paused a moment, studying Danny with that calm, closed-off expression of his, and then continued, "You've had a rough couple of months, and I understand. But there won't be much I can do another time." His voice was quiet, and not unkind.

Danny just nodded; he knew. They said no more about it after that.

Later, he went, on Kathy Berson's advice, to talk to the guy from what everybody now euphemistically referred to as _the incident_. He swallowed his pride, and said he was sorry, and, fortunately, the guest, who'd been upgraded to a suite and comped for just about everything, seemed happy enough to accept the apology and just leave it at that.

Danny imagined that someone, one of the lawyers probably, had told the guy about what happened with the baby, and as much as he hated that, hated the idea of that being used as an excuse, he told himself to let it go, to just be grateful that the whole thing had blown over so easily.

The rest of the day went quietly. People came up to his office periodically, for one reason or another but mostly, Danny suspected, to check up on him. Mike and then Sam both appeared, on the pretext of dropping off security reports, picking up information on a whale. They were awkward and thoughtful, not wanting to say the wrong thing and not wanting, either, to say nothing at all.

"You gave Ed a run for his money, that's for sure," Mike joked lightly, handing over papers for Danny to sign.

Danny just gave him a slight, helpless shrug, shook his head.

"I don't really know what I was thinkin'," he told Mike, softly, staring down at the pages in his hands, "I was just stupid, I guess."

"From what I heard," Mike answered loyally, "anybody else woulda done the same."

Danny remembers being pretty sure this wasn't really true, that Mike for one would probably have been smarter than to let some bad-tempered idiot get to him like that, but he nodded anyway, grateful to Mike for saying it.

"Listen," Mike added, hesitantly, flipping the folder he held from hand to hand, "If you ever need anything, then… you know where I am."

"Thanks, Mikey," Danny replied, voice quiet, and there was a moment or two's uncertain pause after that, neither of them knowing what to do next – whether they should hug, or make a joke of it, or just start talking about the basketball scores.

"Okay," Mike said finally to break the silence, smiling slightly and turning to head out, "Catch you later."

Sam was blunter, just came marching in and asked, "Do I need to tell you how dumb that was?"

"You don't need to tell me," Danny answered tiredly – he'd been telling himself the same thing all day, after all.

Sam accepted his answer with a little nod. She wavered for a moment, and then gave him a light pat on the arm and told him, in that brisk-yet-gentle manner he thinks he's only ever known in Sam, "Hey… so… I just wanted to tell you that, you know, I know what it's like when something happens, and it kinda messes you up and you go a little psycho. So… come find me, you know, if you ever wanna… talk or whatever."

And then, before Danny could answer, she stepped forward, gave him a quick, tight hug.

"You know we love you," she said softly.

Danny was surprised, and touched. Sam just isn't the kind of person who often does that sort of thing. He wanted to say something, to thank her, but he couldn't think what, and all of a sudden he didn't know that he could trust his voice to try. So he swallowed and tried to smile, and Sam stepped back, leaving him with another swift pat on the arm.

"Just be glad it wasn't one of my whales you assaulted," she warned, half-joking, as she went.

When she'd gone, he stood at his desk, trying to feel like he was supposed to be there, feeling both grateful and guilty – guilty for worrying everyone, for causing a scene, for not pulling his weight the last few months, and leaving the others to pick up the slack.

Guilty, too, because he knew even then that he probably never would take them up on their offers – of a talk or a coffee or whatever else he might need – just as he didn't the first time they made them, right after the baby died. And, as it turns out, he hasn't.

It's not that he doesn't appreciate them, because he does – it's only sometimes, after all, and only to himself, that he allows a tiny, bitter part of him to resent the sympathy and the kindness, or, rather, to resent being the one the others have to feel sympathy for. And it's not that he doesn't think they would listen, because he knows they always would.

It's just that he's learned over time, and maybe he got this from his father, or maybe it's just the way he is, that it's just easier, just simpler and perhaps less painful, not to talk about these things, or about how he feels, but to simply try to close it up and ride it out until, one day, it no longer hurts the way it did.

But even so, it helps, knowing they're there. And, that day, it helped more than he could have said that when everyone else was still treading cautiously around him, speaking in hushed voices, like he was something fragile and volatile that might go off on them at any minute, Mike and Sam just went on acting like everything was normal.

* * *

Now, as he drives home tonight, he remembers that first day of the start of something. He remembers how it felt, back then, imagining the days to come and trying to believe that, one way or another, he and Delinda would find a way through them and out the other side.

He thinks, or hopes, that maybe now they have. Or that they've started to, at least. These last few weeks, he's spent so long oscillating from one feeling to another, from the certainty that they can do this to the fear that, truthfully, perhaps they can't. But he thinks, now, he's beginning to feel sure.

The two of them have learned, as the days have gone by, a gentle pattern of give and take. She leaves the lights on for him, even on the bad days, and sometimes she smiles. And, in return, he tries not to push or hurry her, tries to be patient, and only count the good days.

In the evenings they sit at the table together to eat dinner, and find safe and painless things to talk about. He tells her about his day at work, saving up the craziest and the funniest things to describe to her, exaggerating them – just a little – trying to coax a smile.

Sometimes they walk, along the streets that surround their building and back, the air still warm and smelling of summer, the lights bright in other people's windows, and, now and again, one of them will reach out for the other's hand as they go.

And, steadily, somehow, it has started to get easier, to talk and smile and do normal things, even if at first it's an effort, takes a while to remember how.

One night, he was telling her a story, about some whale of Sam's who'd been driving everyone crazy all weekend, and she started to laugh, her clear, childish laugh, one that kept on going until he started too, and soon, even though it wasn't particularly funny, they were both sitting there, laughing, unable to stop. He looked across at her then, and for a moment there she looked like his girl again.

Another time, he was sat on the edge of the bed, watching her, for no real reason, as she searched the drawers for something to wear. She glanced up at the mirror, saw him watching, and she turned toward him with that smile on her face, the one he recognized from before, the one that said she knew exactly what was going on in his head, while he could only guess at what was in hers.

As she passed him, he stood up, caught her hand and kissed her, on the mouth, hand in her hair, just to try it, to remember what it felt like, and this time she didn't freeze or flinch away, as she would have done a few weeks before. She smiled at him, briefly, tentatively, and he counted that as a victory.

He ran into Jillian the day after that, in the hallway outside their apartment, leaving just as he arrived. She stopped to chat to him briefly, the two of them putting on their cheerful faces, doing the usual thing that they do, where they don't talk about Delinda, or how bad things have been, where they each try to protect the other, to prevent them from worrying any more about her than they already do.

But then, as she was about to leave, Jillian turned to him, told him, gently, "She seems better this week."

He hesitated, surprised.

"You think?" he asked, and Jillian smiled.

"Yeah, I do," she said softly, and then added, "And so do you." She gave his elbow a slight squeeze. "Not quite so much like a zombie."

Still, from time to time, there are days when it just doesn't seem to work. Days when she's quiet and distant, hard to reach all of a sudden, though she's standing right there. Days when he's so sick of trying all the time, when he starts to feel like all they're doing is treading water, getting nowhere further and just wearing themselves out in the process.

These are the times when he just can't help remembering, when he'll find himself thinking, all of a sudden, of that night, of sitting outside the hospital room with Jillian, holding paper cups of coffee that neither of them could drink, watching the door and knowing that soon Delinda was going to wake up, and he was going to have to break her heart and tell her.

Or he'll think of her sitting in the bed, white faced and empty eyed, saying to him, her voice soft and dulled and desperate, "We never even named him."

He'll remember that, and he'll think of their son, who will forever be _the baby_ to them, who will never have a name, and the sadness of it just seems infinite. He'll think of that and he'll ask himself what the hell he thinks he's doing, trying to fix – promising to fix – something so unbearable as this.

But he knows, by now, that the only way to get through these days is to get through them, and so he tries to do that. When the moments come where he finds himself remembering, or knows that she's remembering, some little thing from before, or thinking – the thought of it spiralling, and painful every time – about the future ahead of them that's suddenly become this empty, aching blank, he tries to keep them both moving.

He tries to talk to her – not even about the baby, or about the future, but just about anything, just to fill in the spaces and the silences, to hear the sound of her voice in reply. And, gradually, she starts to turn to him too, to talk to him, even on the days when everything is at its hardest.

They have both come to understand that if they move, if they talk, then it gets easier to keep going. That if they keep it to themselves, if they stay still with it, then soon they'll find themselves sitting in the dark again, and neither of them wants to go back to that.

* * *

The first thing that he notices, as he lets himself into the apartment, is that the lights are on. It still surprises him, somehow. The second thing he notices is that he can smell cooking, coming from the kitchen, and for a moment he just stands there, not quite believing it. They never cook – never did, not even before.

Closing the door behind him, he comes around the corner and finds her in the kitchen, apron on, stirring something in a pan. The dining table is set, with wine glasses and the good china, candles lit and gleaming off the glass.

She looks up and sees him. She smiles, almost shyly, and says, "Hey."

"Hey," he answers, a smile starting as he comes closer, admiring the carefully set table, the cooking smell. "What's all this?"

"I'm making pasta," she tells him.

She seems almost nervous, and it's strange to see her like this, effervescent, ebullient Delinda quiet and withdrawn. But there's still something in her voice, a little proud of herself for making the effort, for impressing him, that makes him smile, reminds him of the way she used to be.

"What, no Chicken Delinda?" he teases.

She gives him a look that's halfway between a smile and a frown. "Maybe next time," she says, and then adds, "I don't know what this will be like. It's Mom's recipe, so… who knows."

"It'll be great," he says, and then again, quietly, almost to himself, "It'll be great." He waits a moment and asks, louder, "You need any help?"

She smiles, shakes her head. "I'm good," she answers.

So, he sits down at the table instead, watches her in the kitchen, the light catching her hair.

"How was work?" she asks.

"Oh, fine," he replies, still looking around, a little distracted. He spins a wineglass in his hand. "They're opening The Rooftop tomorrow night. Well, they're calling it Olympus now, but… I still think The Rooftop was better."

"Totally," she agrees, in a way that suggests she's only humouring him, and he smiles.

For a while they drift along. She spins the salad; he pours the wine. They talk, easily, about nothing much at all, and he thinks how good it is, just to be able to talk to her. He thinks how long it's been since he's seen her look this close to happy.

He doesn't know why he asks, but the words come out before he's even really thought about it.

"Hey, Dee," he calls to her, drumming his hands lightly on the table. He waits as she turns toward him, drying her hands on a cloth. "Have you thought any more," he asks carefully, "about us getting married?"

She hesitates, looks at him anxiously all of a sudden, and he wishes at once that he hadn't said it, knew it would be too soon.

"Danny, I…" she starts, and he steps in swiftly, tries not to seem angry, or frustrated, even though he is, if he's honest, perhaps a little of both. He doesn't want to ruin the evening, not now when everything is going so well.

"Never mind," he says quickly, moves his hands as though to brush the words away. "It's okay. We don't need to talk about that."

She says, "I'm sorry…"

He shakes his head and smiles. It is okay, he tells himself. He can wait. He can wait, and it will be fine. He knows he has to be patient, to be careful. It's just hard sometimes to keep going not knowing where exactly it is that they're heading to.

He says, slowly, deliberately, "Well, in that case… you think you'd like to come to the opening party with me instead?"

She stands in the middle of the floor in her apron, towel held tight in her hands, and suddenly he feels guilty for doing this, for pushing it, for making her feel guilty.

But he's so tired, sometimes, of doing everything alone. He's tired of waking up alone and falling asleep alone, going to work alone and coming home alone. He's tired of always being the one asking, always being the one who has to wait for an answer.

He just needs something, something small, to let him know she's still there.

He keeps his eyes on her and waits. It seems slightly ridiculous to him, feeling like he's asking for so little, yet at the same time feeling like he's asking for too much.

But now, she brushes her hair out of her face, takes a deep breath, and nods her head.

"Sure," she says, and he thinks it's crazy how much he loves her then.


	6. The Way Home

**22/05/10 - Edited to re-add the formatting. Sorry for any confusion!**

Author's Note: I'm really, really sorry for the long wait yet again. Things have just been really busy and I haven't had a lot of free time. Thank you very, very much to anyone who's put up with my slowness and continued to read!

This one is the last chapter for this story, although I'm hoping to perhaps do an epilogue or something once I have a bit more time (hopefully people will still want to read it!)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter! If you have the time, please let me know what you think.

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Way Home**

* * *

As they walk into the room, she feels like everyone is looking. She can feel herself shrinking into him, her grip tightening on his arm. She feels almost silly for doing it, thinks it's kind of funny, how someone like her, someone who's never been shy, who's always thrived on people and parties and crowded rooms, suddenly needs him here to hold her hand, to keep her standing upright.

She wonders how he can do this, how he can bear to come here every day and face all these people; all these people who know, and look at her like they know, all these people who will come over soon, who will ask her how she's doing and how she's been.

And she will have to smile, and nod, and tell them that she's fine, and suddenly she doesn't know if she can do that. Just the thought of it makes her feel anxious, panicked, her heartbeat sounding louder and louder inside her head.

All day, she's been telling herself, over and over, that she wants to do this. She wants to get out of the house, and she wants to see people, talk to people.

She wants, too, to show Danny that she's trying, wants for him to know that.

And sometimes, she's found herself actually believing it, found herself feeling just a little braver, just a little steadier, just a little bit more like her old self.

But now, now that she's here, all she wants to do is turn around and get out of the door.

The room, full of voices and lights and people, catches her off balance, the whole thing disorienting, overwhelming. Faces seem to float around her, at once familiar and strange in the soft, blurry lighting. A musician plays the piano in the corner, but though she can see his fingers moving, the sound of the music is lost under the loud, insistent stream of talking and calling and laughter. The air fills with a powerful cocktail of smells – perfume and aftershave, fresh linen and floor polish, seafood and champagne.

She stays, though. She tells herself that she's here, and she has to stay. That she said she would and so she will. She shakes her head, as though that will clear it, and tells herself to stop this, to stop making it into such a big deal.

She brushes her hair back uncertainly, tugs awkwardly at her dress, the plainest one she could find in her closet. For the first time in her life, she doesn't want to stand out at a party – all she wants is to melt away into the background, unseen.

She looks around the room, taking a moment to adjust to it again, to all these things she used to see every day without even noticing them.

"You okay?" Danny asks her, gently, in an undertone. He gives her a little smile.

She takes a deep breath. "I'm okay," she answers, finding the confidence from somewhere.

And soon, in fact, she is okay. Her eyes grow accustomed to the brightness of the lights; the sounds of the party fade gradually back from her ears. She stops feeling like the room is right up against her, surrounding her, threatening to swallow her up.

Mike comes across to them, calls out, "Hey, Danny, hey, Dee." He gives her a hug, a quick peck on the cheek, and if he's surprised to see her there, he doesn't show it. She gives his hand a thankful squeeze.

Beside her, Danny looks around, admiring the view from the windows – the Strip spread out before them in all its glowing, gaudy glory.

"This place looks amazing," he says, and she nods along. It does, she thinks, it's beautiful.

"Kinda makes you feel like you're gonna fall off the edge though," Mike jokes, gesturing to the floor-length windows, and they both nod, and smile slightly.

Sam, who stands a little further off in the crowd, breaks the moment's quiet.

"Danny!" she exclaims, holding up a hand. She hurries over, her heels clicking out a brisk beat across the polished floor. "My whale wants to talk to you," she says, "Mr. Tyler." She waves her hand back toward a silver-haired man drinking champagne at the buffet. Danny gives her a questioning look, as if to say, "Why?", and Sam shrugs at him. "I don't know," she says, lightly sarcastic, "I guess he thinks you're in charge around here or something."

Danny pulls a little face at her.

"Oh, Piper's looking for you," Sam adds to Mike, who thanks her and heads off into the swell of people spreading round the room.

"Be back in a minute," he says as he goes.

Finally, Sam turns to Delinda, seeing her there for the first time. "Hey, stranger," she says simply, and smiles at her.

Delinda smiles back, a little unsure of how to behave around here, around them. She doesn't want to seem as shaky and fragile as she feels, doesn't want them all feeling sorry for her. But, at the same time, she isn't sure if she knows how to act normally any more, can't remember how to put on the pretence of being totally fine.

"Hey," she answers quietly.

There is a brief pause, which Sam should be filling with the usual softly-spoken questions, the vague, anxious-faced responses, but isn't; understanding, silently, that there isn't really any point to all that.

Instead, she turns to Danny.

"You coming?" she asks, as though scolding a dawdling child.

"All right, all right," Danny says good-naturedly. He looks to Delinda, tilting his head to the side in the direction of Sam's whale, wordlessly asking the same question.

She shakes her head slightly. She doesn't think she can face Sam's whale just yet. Maybe once she's had a drink or two.

"I'm just gonna go to the bar," she tells him, and he nods.

"Okay," he says, lightly. He hesitates, watching her for just a second longer. "Come find me when you're ready." And then he smiles and turns, and follows Sam away across the room.

* * *

She finds a stool at the bar, away from the crowd, and sits there for a while. There aren't too many people around here, and she doesn't have to talk much. She sips her drink, stirs the ice in her glass with a swizzle stick. She studies the damp, smudged circle left behind on the coaster.

When she glances back up, the bartender smiles at her, the conspiratorial smile of someone who doesn't really like parties either, and she guesses that he doesn't know the story about the baby, and smiles gratefully back.

She watches the other people in the room, talking and laughing, and she wonders if they are really all that happy, the way they seem, or if they are just better at pretending.

Looking around, she's almost surprised at how everything here is so much the same, when she feels like it should all, somehow, be different. She guesses it's true, that old cliché: life goes on.

They've been trying to do that, she and Danny, over these last few weeks: trying to let their lives go on. She thinks that mostly, surprisingly, it's been working.

Sometimes, she tries picturing the days as steps, always going, however slowly, upward and forward.

Other times, she tries imagining herself inside some sort of protective bubble, imagining that if she can hold herself steady, if she can take everything nice and slow and easy, then somehow she can keep the bubble in place. There have been times when it has quavered, times when a word or a touch or something she's remembered has almost penetrated its thin, shielding surface. But, through all that, it has stayed intact so far.

It has been hardest, she's found, because it's so much more difficult, somehow, so much more painful, to let go of the bad memories than it was to let go of the good. She feels sometimes like she's caught up in this constant, delicate dance, forever spinning between forgetting and remembering.

Because, as hard as it is to remember, she can't help thinking it would be still harder to wake up one morning and realize she'd forgotten.

She wants to remember the baby because, after all, she and Danny are the only ones who really can. She doesn't want for him to fade away forever, some sad thing that they've put behind them. He means so much to her, her baby, and she doesn't want to lose him completely.

And so, sometimes, she lets herself remember, chafing away at tender, aching skin, pricking at the surface of the bubble.

She lets herself think about all the things that she wanted for him, for the three of them. She remembers what it felt like to hold him, the one and only time that she did, and how small he was, so small it felt almost like holding nothing at all. She remembers the nurse coming softly in, remembers Danny taking the baby from her, so, so carefully, and the tiny shudder that went through his shoulders as he did.

But she's started to learn, now, how to stop herself from doing this, or at least how to limit it. She's started to understand that there is a difference between not forgetting things, and letting herself get trapped by remembering them.

And, gradually, she's found she's started to remember other things too. Things that she hadn't forgotten, exactly – just lost for a while. Things that she used to like, used to love; things that she finds herself, now, starting to miss.

Things like getting coffee with Sam, or wandering through the Forum shops with her mom, or the calm, satisfied sensation of looking out over the restaurant and seeing everyone served, every table filled.

Things like the way it used to feel, kissing Danny, light-headed, weak-at-the-knees kinds of kisses.

Now, from her seat at the bar, she turns towards the party and searches out the faces of her friends in the crowd.

She watches Sam talking with her whale, giving him a toss of smooth, thick hair, and a sly, flirtatious smile. She watches Mike, motioning with his hands toward the windows as he talks to Piper.

She watches Cooper, walking unhurried circles around the room, cigar in his hand. He looks across at her at one point, nods to her and smiles slightly, and she returns the gesture.

And she watches Danny, who's with Sam and her whale. He's wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, which he doesn't very often. The shirt is crisp and clean-lined and makes his skin look tan. He's smiling at something Sam's saying, and he looks happy and handsome and, for a minute, like nothing's changed.

She thinks about how often now the only look she seems to see on his face is that tense, weary expression, like he's got the dead weight of the world on his shoulders. Or that other look, that anxious, searching, _Are you okay? _look, the one that leaves her feeling tired and guilty, and angry with him for making her feel like that, and angry with herself for being angry with him. She misses seeing him smile.

And so she takes a breath, and, catching his eye from across the room, she smiles over at him, the best one that she can manage. He looks at her for a second, surprised, and pleased, and then he smiles brilliantly back, that heartbreaking smile of his.

And for a moment she feels, perhaps not fully happy, not yet, but better – lifted, buoyed by something. She feels, for the first time, like she can bear it. Like she can breathe through it.

* * *

They are quiet as they drive home. She gazes out of the car window, trying to make out her reflection in the glass. She wonders if she would recognize herself yet.

When they get back to their apartment and he closes the door, she reaches for the light switch, and then she hesitates. Slowly, she moves her hand away, and turns towards him in the dark. She finds that she's shivering slightly.

He doesn't say anything; watches her and waits. She gives him a quick, trembling kiss.

Gently, he pulls her closer, and kisses her back.

Maybe it's the champagne she's drunk, or the fact that she's safely back now, and tonight wasn't so bad as she'd thought, but suddenly she feels reckless, giddy, a funny, bubbling feeling. She feels like, finally, she just wants to stop thinking and be happy for a while.

They stand for a moment close together in the doorway, her hands on his shoulders and his cheek against her hair, like partners tiring at the end of a long, slow dance. And then they move, finding their way to their bedroom in the dark.

This is a step, she thinks.

* * *

Later, she lies awake in bed. She listens to him breathe; can tell, without looking up at him, that he isn't sleeping either.

"Danny?" she finds herself asking, her voice sounding soft and unsure in the silence of the room, "Do you ever think… about the baby?"

It's the first time she's felt brave enough to bring it up.

She asks it because she does, all of the time, even when she doesn't mean to. Because she wonders, sometimes, if she'll ever stop thinking about the baby, or if the thought of him will always be there, somewhere, lingering at the edges of everything she says and does.

She turns her head towards Danny, and he glances at her briefly, and then looks back up at the shadows on the ceiling. "Sure I do," he says, quietly, keeping his voice deliberately calm. He still doesn't look at her, squints at the ceiling as he speaks. He's hesitant, at once wanting to say something and not sure what will happen if he does. But, after a moment or two, he carries on. "I mean, he'd be five months old by now," he says, his voice low and soft and steady, "A year's time, he'd be walking, and talking… Few years after that he'd be starting school… bringing back those – those little finger-painting things…" He half-smiles, swallows hard. "I'd be teaching him to play catch in the yard, you know, like they do in movies…" He makes a sound that's a sort of soft laugh, and she manages a smile.

He turns suddenly, so that he's facing her. His eyelashes are wet. "I just – " he starts to say, then falters and stops short. He shakes his head slightly. "I think I would've liked all that."

She nods, her eyes suddenly full. Tenderly, she trails the back of her hand along his arm, wanting, maybe for the first time, to be the one to reach out to comfort.

She tries to think of something to say, thinks of all those times, in the hospital and after they got home, when he'd tell her, again and again, that she would be okay, that they would be okay, that it would all be okay, as though he thought that if he said it often enough he could actually make it happen.

In the end, though, she doesn't say anything for a long time. She moves closer to him, just lies for a while with her head on his shoulder. His hand rests against her back, stirring circles onto her skin with his thumb.

Eventually, she says, just wanting to say it and not knowing when to. "I'm sorry." She tilts her head slightly to look up at him. "I must have been unbearable to live with."

He looks back at her, shakes his head. "No," he answers. He sighs quietly, and then says, emphasising the first word lightly, "I'm sorry. I should've, I don't know, I should've been more patient. I shouldn't've always…"

And now, it's her turn to shake her head.

They fall into silence again for a second or two. There are a lot of things that she wants to say now, but she doesn't know which.

She turns her head, kisses his shoulder.

"I love you," she says, meaning it.

* * *

Another few weeks go by, and she takes them slowly, step by step. She tells herself that she has to be sure about this. She doesn't want to stay just because it's the safe and easy thing to do. Doesn't want him to stay just because he wants, needs, to take care of her.

She thinks sometimes about Cooper telling her to remember what was most important. A lot of the time she still doesn't really know what that was supposed to mean. But, occasionally, she will find herself thinking, just for a moment, that perhaps the most important thing is simply that they've been to hell and back, the two of them, over the last six months, but they're both still here. Still breathing, just about.

She thinks about that one morning, sitting in the sun at the bedroom window. She feels, for some reason, different today, happy. At the same time lighter and somehow more solid.

It's a good feeling, she thinks.

She doesn't hear Danny come into the room, only turns her head when she hears him saying, "Hey."

He stands in the doorway, smiles at her. "What're you doing?" he asks.

"Thinking," she tells him. She takes a deep breath. For a moment she's nervous, almost doesn't say it. But in the end she asks, "You remember what you said – the night before the opening party? You asked if I'd thought any more about it?"

He hesitates, looks at her quizzically. And then he nods slowly.

"Yes," he says.

"I have thought about it." She can feel her heartbeat getting quicker, can feel his eyes fixed on her. She makes herself keep looking back. "Do you still want to?" she asks.

Slowly, he smiles. He gives a little nod. "Yes," he answers again, after a moment.

She finds herself starting to smile now too, as she says, "Do you wanna ask me again?"

He looks down and laughs softly, smile widening into a grin.

"You sure?" he jokes, "'Cause I'm not gonna keep asking forever, you know."

She shakes out her hair. "I'm sure," she tells him.

He looks across at her from the doorway. He's still smiling a little, but his eyes are serious now, dark and deep.

"Will you marry me?" he asks.

She allows herself, before she speaks, one last thought of before. She thinks of him asking that same question, half a year ago, and she wishes just for a second to have that moment back, to pare it down the centre like an apple and step inside.

And then she looks at him, now, and she tells herself that maybe one day, maybe even soon, they will be happy like that again. She tells herself that though there are some things that will always hurt – March mornings or baby shoes in a shop window – eventually it will get easier, even if it never really gets easy. She tells herself that she loves him, and that he loves her, and that somehow, in some way, everything will be okay.

She smiles, and tells him, "Yes."

* * *

**End**

* * *

A/N: There we go! Thank you for reading, and I really hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you so, so, so much to everybody who has left reviews/replies – it has been so much encouragement and it has really made my day to read them! I'm very, very grateful :)


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